That's cool. Now make it 10x faster and almost silent. That motor is loud and whiney. Also stepper motors work just fine with direct drive and this doesn't need to be CNC precision. First change out the threaded shaft for one with a bigger pitch. Then change out the motor for a better motor. Then you just need a cover/drain plate to hide the screw. The bottle dispensers are pretty nice though. A better touch would be if it was similar to just a pour spout and it had two solenoid valves (one top and bottom) with a filler section in between. Then you would only need to control the amount of volume in and out then release. Which is similar to your car lock actuator i suppose.

If you really hated the threaded drive you could use a belt drive with the slide. Mount the belt over or next to the slide and have a mounting plate for the cup on top of the slide. This could have some downsides with cleaning if you somehow spill. Threaded + drain cover would be better.

You could always go backwards too and make the bottle's simulate a hand pour and have a mechanism to push and pull it from the back. (think the drinking bird toy)

Seems like it would have been a lot faster/easier if all the outputs of the bottles were funneled into a glass at a fixed location. Instead of a "serial drink protocol," a "parallel drink protocol" would be much more efficient.

This is exactly the wrong idea. You have to move the liquids to the glass. It is far more effort to move the glass to the liquid, like this stupid machine.

Just use plastic tubes from each bottle to the glass. You could use 6 different tubes, each pointing at the glass, each with a separate actuator (open/closed pour/not pour). You could probably fit dozens of separate tubes into one pour location.

Bars have used this sort of gravity-fed auto-dispenser system for decades. Usually a row of taps is set up, and above it a rack of bottles attached to separate feed tubes. The bartender just pushes the glass against the tap and one measured shot is dispensed. Each liquor has a separate feed tube, rather than funneling them through one tube, so each liquor is not contaminated by another.

So if you want to do this as INefficiently as possible, you'll set up a system like this, using a compressed gas feed driving liquids, and a noisy stepper motor to move a glass around. Jeez just listening to the sound of the motor on the video gave me a headache.

Hmm, I would like to build one of these! A peristaltic pump could be used for exceedingly precise and perfect cocktails, and it would run clean water through the hoses to refresh between recipes. Like charlie don't surf, I would remove the need to ferry the glass about, but there would be just one hose to the glass with a bottle selector located behind the peristaltic pump. The conveyor system is neat to watch, I'm sure, but it means that each additional liquor requires that the conveyor get that much longer.

An optional temporary receptacle that mixes the drink before dispensing would also be cool.

This is exactly the wrong idea. You have to move the liquids to the glass. It is far more effort to move the glass to the liquid, like this stupid machine.

Just use plastic tubes from each bottle to the glass. You could use 6 different tubes, each pointing at the glass, each with a separate actuator (open/closed pour/not pour). You could probably fit dozens of separate tubes into one pour location.

Bars have used this sort of gravity-fed auto-dispenser system for decades. Usually a row of taps is set up, and above it a rack of bottles attached to separate feed tubes. The bartender just pushes the glass against the tap and one measured shot is dispensed. Each liquor has a separate feed tube, rather than funneling them through one tube, so each liquor is not contaminated by another.

So if you want to do this as INefficiently as possible, you'll set up a system like this, using a compressed gas feed driving liquids, and a noisy stepper motor to move a glass around. Jeez just listening to the sound of the motor on the video gave me a headache.

I don't believe he ever said anything about this being the best way to make an automated drink maker. He looked at a CNC lathe and wanted to move a glass around with it.

Sure, we all know that there are many different ways that a drink dispenser can be designed. This is still an awesome piece of equipment.

Maybe this technology has the potential to develop into a commercial product. Perhaps one day all we will need to do is walk into a liquor store, press a few buttons, and after waiting a minute or two, pick up a sealed bottle containing our very own customized cocktail. Just take it home and open it up.

Seems like it would have been a lot faster/easier if all the outputs of the bottles were funneled into a glass at a fixed location. Instead of a "serial drink protocol," a "parallel drink protocol" would be much more efficient.

This is the exact same thing I thought too while I watched that slow thing moving around.

Solenoid valves at each bottle would add considerably to the cost and complexity.

Tubes from each bottle to the position of the glass would have to be cleaned, adding to cost and complexity, and might result in cross-contamination from previous runs, degrading the quality of the product (spilling long island iced tea residue into your old-fashioned).

Drink-mixing already has a lot of controls built-in. The spouts have a fixed flow rate, and recipes are optimized to be poured while counting time: one half ounce per second. So you can skip a lot of measuring and tubing and whatnot with this guy's design… just push the glass to the spout for a period of time to get a known volume of liquid. That's pretty clever.

The chief enhancement, it seems to me, would be to put the bottle rack on an indexed rotating platform. There's one servo for the platform and one servo to raise the glass to the spout, thereby activating the spout. The program would consist of a bottle selector and a glass raiser. The only parts to clean would be the spouts on the bottles, which you can clean as part of the bottle-changing process.

From there, we need a shaking stage, a stirring stage, and a garnishing stage. Hmm.

I want to know how it makes a Manhattan? A proper Manhattan needs to be thoroughly shaken. Most mixed drinks should at least be 'stirred'. I didnt watch the whole video so sorry if it was addressed later in the video.

I want to know how it makes a Manhattan? A proper Manhattan needs to be thoroughly shaken. Most mixed drinks should at least be 'stirred'. I didnt watch the whole video so sorry if it was addressed later in the video.

I think it would just dump the shots into the mixer, they put their own ice in too so I imagine it's let the machine do the pouring, the stir and serve happens themselves

The potential improvements though are limitless. Make the mixers with a small blending/stirring thing in the bottom and make the device a whole lot faster and you wouldn't have issues with nightclubs/bars having staff who can't make anything that isn't a spirit mixed with coke, it could do it all. Granted, as mentioned above, this is a bad way of doing it to start with (the glass should stay still) but it's still a fun little project that I wouldn't mind having at home.

And completely aside, a proper Manhattan should be stirred. There's nothing in a Manhattan that doesn't mix well (the only time you should shake a drink) and all you're doing by shaking is losing control over how chilled and watered down it becomes (you want it chilled right and a little water added to take the edge of, shaking it will just water the crap out of it).

This reminds me a bit of the automated soda dispenser McDonalds uses for drive through.

Cool project but I think it's reinventing the wheel. There's already professional systems where the bartender punches a code on the beverage gun and it automatically dispenses all the components. The bartender then only has to give it a stir and it's ready. The difference with those systems and this one is the alcohol feeds into beverage pumps to the gun(s). I know there's massive installations at many Las Vegas casinos where they want to speed up service and control the pour volume.

I want to know how it makes a Manhattan? A proper Manhattan needs to be thoroughly shaken. Most mixed drinks should at least be 'stirred'.

And completely aside, a proper Manhattan should be stirred. There's nothing in a Manhattan that doesn't mix well (the only time you should shake a drink) and all you're doing by shaking is losing control over how chilled and watered down it becomes (you want it chilled right and a little water added to take the edge of, shaking it will just water the crap out of it).

And make it cloudy. The only reason to shake a cocktail that contains only spirits (Manhattan, Martini, etc.) is to make it very cold and watery. This can be done, for instance, because the drinker doesn't like the taste of the spirits, as both the cold temperature and the extra water kill the taste. (So much for James Bond's sophistication...)

Having said that, a very quick shake won't kill the cocktail and if you let it stand for a minute it will (mostly) clear up too.

I want to know how it makes a Manhattan? A proper Manhattan needs to be thoroughly shaken. Most mixed drinks should at least be 'stirred'.

And completely aside, a proper Manhattan should be stirred. There's nothing in a Manhattan that doesn't mix well (the only time you should shake a drink) and all you're doing by shaking is losing control over how chilled and watered down it becomes (you want it chilled right and a little water added to take the edge of, shaking it will just water the crap out of it).

And make it cloudy. The only reason to shake a cocktail that contains only spirits (Manhattan, Martini, etc.) is to make it very cold and watery. This can be done, for instance, because the drinker doesn't like the taste of the spirits, as both the cold temperature and the extra water kill the taste. (So much for James Bond's sophistication...)

Having said that, a very quick shake won't kill the cocktail and if you let it stand for a minute it will (mostly) clear up too.

Thank you robrob and ws3! I was mistaken, but I also feel vindicated, for years Ive had to ask bartenders not to shake my Manhattans and theyve always acted like I was crazy!

I want to know how it makes a Manhattan? A proper Manhattan needs to be thoroughly shaken. Most mixed drinks should at least be 'stirred'.

And completely aside, a proper Manhattan should be stirred. There's nothing in a Manhattan that doesn't mix well (the only time you should shake a drink) and all you're doing by shaking is losing control over how chilled and watered down it becomes (you want it chilled right and a little water added to take the edge of, shaking it will just water the crap out of it).

And make it cloudy. The only reason to shake a cocktail that contains only spirits (Manhattan, Martini, etc.) is to make it very cold and watery. This can be done, for instance, because the drinker doesn't like the taste of the spirits, as both the cold temperature and the extra water kill the taste. (So much for James Bond's sophistication...)

Having said that, a very quick shake won't kill the cocktail and if you let it stand for a minute it will (mostly) clear up too.

For years I've told everyone that James Bond is an uncultured prick who doesn't know how to serve a Martini and is a dick about it to everyone who knows better.

Actually I enjoyed seeing the machine being built more than seeing the final product. The glass moved too slowly, and that whining...

Sounds like the disease Richard Feynman was talking about:

Quote:

Well, Mr. Frankel, who started this program, began to suffer from the computer disease that anybody who works with computers now knows about. It's a very serious disease and it interferes completely with the work. The trouble with computers is you *play* with them. They are so wonderful. You have these switches - if it's an even number you do this, if it's an odd number you do that - and pretty soon you can do more and more elaborate things if you are clever enough, on one machine.

After a while the whole system broke down. Frankel wasn't paying any attention; he wasn't supervising anybody. The system was going very, very slowly - while he was sitting in a room figuring out how to make one tabulator automatically print arc-tangent X, and then it would start and it would print columns and then bitsi, bitsi, bitsi, and calculate the arc-tangent automatically by integrating as it went along and make a whole table in one operation.

Absolutely useless. We *had* tables of arc-tangents. But if you've ever worked with computers, you understand the disease - the *delight* in being able to see how much you can do. But he got the disease for the first time, the poor fellow who invented the thing.

And make it cloudy. The only reason to shake a cocktail that contains only spirits (Manhattan, Martini, etc.) is to make it very cold and watery. This can be done, for instance, because the drinker doesn't like the taste of the spirits, as both the cold temperature and the extra water kill the taste. (So much for James Bond's sophistication...)

Having said that, a very quick shake won't kill the cocktail and if you let it stand for a minute it will (mostly) clear up too.

There's some thought that Fleming was having Bond drink watered down drinks on purpose. Perhaps to stay sharp or perhaps for liver problems (which many people think Fleming had in real life).

You're spot on, many drinks really should just be stirred. But the biggest mistake when making a Manhattan is cheap Vermouth. Dolan is my favorite these days.